Posts tagged “new york city”

The essence of drama is conflict. I had a lot of both in the past few years, but 2015 was oddly light and serene. I hustled my ass off, pulled every string, worked and LIVED, and received very little flack from the universe. 2015 was THE YEAR.

I started the year in New York City where I was housesitting. On a chance invite from a friend, I attended a Moth Storytelling event. I had been listening to the Moth podcast for years, and this was a story-slam event, meaning I could put my name in a hat and possibly be called up on stage. I threw my hat in the ring, decided what I would say while I was waiting in line to get into the venue, and wouldn’t you know it….

SPOKEN WORD

Live Storytelling and Spoken Word means a lot to me and I continued to do it back home in Toronto at Raconteurs:

Storytelling is an extension of writing to me. It feeds my need to tell stories and also to be a ham. I also discovered that working out ideas on stage proved excellent for cultivating written story ideas. 2015 was also the year of–

Chris Writes All The Things

Editors this year were like, “Hey Chris, do you want to publish stuff? HERE, HAVE ALL THE PUBLICATIONS YOU LIKE.”

It was like payback for many years of only publishing maybe one or two pieces every 6 months.

Of course, this wasn’t by fluke. I busted my ass, I submitted and submitted and submitted, and got rejection after rejection, but my acceptance rate kind of skyrocketed this year. I actually found myself in the odd position SEVERAL TIMES this year where I had to reject one publication because another had already bought my piece. I was selling pieces so quick, in some instances, I had to turn people down! I ALMOST sent them the lame boilerplate rejections they had sent me for years, but nahhhhhhh.

SELLING STORIES

The first piece I sold this year was actually an academic essay which I sold to Palaver Journal based out of a southern University. I finished my Masters Degree ten years ago, but I can still flex my chops when I need to.

Then I sold a short story to GRAIN when they wanted to buy another story of mine, but I had to turn them down because another journal had already bought it, so they asked for anything else I had, and snapped up this piece right away!

And then I cold-pitched METRO News Canada and they printed my piece in the centrefold:

And just a couple weeks ago, another one of my serious essays about sexual harassment and the experience of reporting it to the police was published by my old friends at AufBau:

And this isn’t even all of my publications! Just a cross-section! I also sold three more stories whose publication dates are imminent, like TOUTE SUITE, dropping in a few weeks soon! So expect to read more from me in the new year!

Speaking of HouseSitting

This year, I did back…

…to back

…to back

…to back

…to back

…to back housesitting gigs.

These pictures aren’t even all of them. In total in 2015 I did ELEVEN housesits in 12 months. Considering that 4 of them lasted more than a month, and one of them lasted almost 3 months, that’s a lot of housesitting with snugglecats and dogs and not having to pay rent.

Last name Win, first name Epic.

And it’s not over yet. I’ve been housesitting for years and years now, so why stop in 2016. Starting in January, I will be housesitting in VIENNA!!

I haven’t been to Vienna since that first European clusterfuck trip in 2005 (here are some posts about that trip…. gosh this blog is old). I was last in Austria in 2012 for my Eurail Extravaganza, but I missed out on Vienna, so I’m super excited to spend a lot of time there this Winter.

I want to to everything Viennese, like eating strudel served by Michael Haneke on a harpsichord.

I’ll also be swinging through London, Prague, and Amsterdam, so the great tapestry of adventures I’m trying to build can continue!

Hey, You Never Know

One of my main mantra’s of 2015 was “Ask and you shall receive.” In the past I’ve refrained from asking for what I wanted because I assumed the answer would be no, or, more likely, I felt pretentious for even asking. Like, who the fuck are you Christine? You got some balls asking for that. That changed this year, when I realized that the worst thing that could happen was they’d say No. And if that’s the worst-case-scenario, it’s pretty surmountable. So with that in mind, I figured no-guts-no-glory. I’m a writer, so my income is limited (obvi). The amount of funds I can allocate to quality of life (movies, music, theatre, concerts, performances, dance, festivals, etc) is extremely limited. So what did I do when I wanted to go to an event but couldn’t afford it?

I asked for free tickets.

And I got them.

BOOM.

This year, just because I asked, I gained free entry to the following:

If It Ain’t Broke…

Everyone knows I’m a huge flea market person (and this year I joined the super secret but now highly coveted collective of BUNZ Trading) so this year I procured a lot of fantastic antiques at bargain prices, and sometimes, for a few tokens or a bottle of wine.

I already had a typewriter, but I still went ahead and got myself a second one. Because reasons.My two bee-yoots, side-by-side

And then I got a rotary phone. It’s a necessity in the modern world.

And then I finally hooked up speakers to my record player, so I went on a vinyl-buying binge, and got some gems like Duke Ellington (click the little volume button in the bottom right of the vid to listen!):

and the master Django Reinhard!

With these new gadgets, I am now able to open a sassy new office… in 1979.

Speaking of Music

I went to some kick-ass concerts this year. In years past I had grown a bit tiresome of concerts (I had been a music critic for about 5 years and now I have a touch of tinnitus…) but, I guess… YOLO

And the Oscar Goes To…

I saw a lot of films this year, and even reviewed some during TIFF for VICE. Here are the ones that haunted me long after the credits rolled:

-VICTORIA

-The Daughter

-Son of Saul

-Homesick

-CitizenFour

-Disorder/Maryland

As you can see from this list, I am not really a mainstream/Hollywood/wide-release film person. I prefer indie cinema, the ones that make the festival circuit. They usually have no money behind them and therefore can take more risks or tell stories we don’t normally see. So you can take your Chris Nolan/JJ Abrahms/Michael Bay clusterfuck and order it on DVD. Yawn.

Get Busy Livin’

As I said, I started the year in New York (housesitting). I also traveled to my hometown of Montreal (housesitting), and just recently I went to Miami (housesitting). But I really wanted to exercise my passport, so I bounced down to Mexico, Guatemala and Belize for a Mayan Adventure!

I made a short film about my experiences, I figured it was more fun than posting a bunch of touristy photos. I call it GET RICH OR DIE MAYAN. Enjoy!

Back in January, I performed at The Moth storyslam in Brooklyn, New York City in front of 400 people. The theme of the night was ‘Cravings’ so I spoke for 5 minutes about being heartbroken, homeless, and hustlin’ on the streets of Europe. It’s basically the conclusion to this spoken word piece I performed at Spark London in the UK back in 2013. I got a standing-O from this crowd, and people were approaching me afterward to give me high-fives and fist-bumps. The crowd was so kind. As I’ve said before, I’ve developed a taste for Spoken Word and live-storytelling, so expect more from me on this front.

My life has been pretty strange over the past two years, but I’ll tell you one thing, it’s never fucking boring.

Live a life less ordinary, munchkins. There are no rules to this thing. Go out and make it yours.

A couple nights ago, I took to the stage at Raconteurs, a live storytelling/spoken word event here in Toronto. Many of you will remember when I performed at Spark London in the UK two or three times. Since then, I developed a taste for live storytelling, probably because it feeds into my need to be a ham, and talk about myself. Womp womp.

Last month, I performed at The Moth in New York City. That experience was probably the most exhilaration storytelling event of my life. There was easily 400 people in the crowd, and the massive standing-O and cheerful roar of applause after I was done was so galvanizing and fulfilling. They’re sending me the video footage of that night, and soon Raconteurs will upload the footage of my story to their YouTube. so stay tuned, munchkins. I hope to do Spark London, The Moth, and Raconteurs again. I listen to all of their podcasts, and am glad to be featured on there too!

Live storytelling feels like an obvious step in my evolution. I double-majored Theatre and Creative Writing for my undergraduate degree. Live storytelling combines them both, you get the performative aspects and the audience pay-off, but also you get to employ the nuances of language and creative non-fiction. I can pretend I’m one of those actor-writer types like Ethan Hawke (who has also performed at The Moth, fyi).

Expect to see more of me on the storytelling stage, my dudes. Dudebros. Brojangles.

I first photographed Icy and Sot in Amsterdam, both on the street at at one of their gallery shows. They’ve become street art darlings since then, with major turns at Norway’s NuArt fest in Stavanger, and also, it seems, New York City. I literally couldn’t walk through a single borough without running into their work. Most of these were in conjunction with the Bushwick Collective, but also, they were part of the Welling Court Project. Even still, some of it just seemed to be good, ol’ fashioned illegal graff. Good on ’em.

This delightful mural in South Williamsburg just went on and on….

… and on….

This massive, colourful explosion in Bushwick seems to depict suicide bombers in Iraq, but it could also be the way protesters are gunned down in Gaza. Or perhaps it’s Tel Aviv. Syria? Tahrir Square? I’m not really sure, but then again, the goal isn’t to precisely identify what the artist is trying to say. The point is to make it mean something to you.

I love how his arm reaches up and hangs off of the barbed wire on the roof.

Apologies for not getting a close-up of his hand. I should point out that I took these photographs the first week of January when it was about -20 degrees and removing my hands from my mitts to take photos was a race against frost bite. I could only take maybe two or three pictures before my hands would sting and splinter and redden and become numb. Graff hunting in winter is so much different than in summer. Le sigh.

Their famous portrait here in blue was a massive mural up in Queens, as part of the Welling Court project.

I love this cop and his shadow mural off of Meserole in Bushwick. It must have been erected during the Black Lives Matter protests, as it seems to be a direct comment on Police Brutality, and appearance vs reality when it comes to New York cops.

Freaky.

You know what’s funny of this walking boy of theirs? If you go on Instagram, everyone thinks this is Banksy.

I had never photographed or heard of Vexta until this trip to NYC, but her work was everywhere and it was gorgeous, dark, haunting, emotive, and meaningful. I really liked her use of colour, and subject matter. And the pieces are just so provocative, you never forget them once you’ve seen them!
I found most of her work in Bushwick as part of the Bushwick Collective, but there were some pieces found in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, so just keep your eyes peeled when you’re walking around!

In October 2013, Banksy performed a month-long outdoor extravaganza in New York City. He called it “Better Out Than In.” (Har har har). Each day of the month, he erected a new piece somewhere in Gotham. That’s a lot of pieces and a lot of work. I figured I’d see what remained a year and a half later. To my surprise, I actually found three pieces that remained. In street art circles, lotsa people really hate Banksy. With a passion. He’s reviled by most. I thought his work woulda been paint bombed or destroyed by now. I found three! I was delighted.

The first was this piece at 79th and Broadway on the Upper West Side. The owners of the wall put the piece behind plexiglass to stop people from destroying it, but that hasn’t stopped people from dropping their business cards down there. If you look closely, someone’s house key is stuck in there too.

Now I walked by this wall on Delancey near Bowery many many times as I was hunting street art and didn’t think much of it, until I gave it a good look. What struck me as odd about it was that the rest of the wall had been painted except for this perfect little square of what looked like random tags.

Ahhh, but look closer. Do you see the words “The Musical” embedded in there? Banksy did this thing where he added the tag “The Musical!” to random tags. For example, one tag had said “Dirty Underwear” and he added “The Musical!” This is New York after all.

For reference, this is what the wall looked like before it was heavily tagged:

Playground Mob, The Musical!

And I found this piece by accident 🙂

Finding this piece was a rare treat! It’s Banksy’s Geisha Girls and tree. I was searching for it in Bed-Stuy and couldn’t find it, until I came across one of those rolldown grate thingies on this wall. I figured the piece had to be behind it, so I went inside the business that owns the wall, an optometrist, and asked them politely if I could see the Banksy behind the rolldown grate.

They said sure, came out with the keys, rolled it up, let me take my photographs, and chatted pleasantly with me. And that was it!

Ask and you shall receive, people.

Check out my Banksy category for more of his work that I’ve photographed around the world!

As I’ve mentioned previously, last year Space Invader came out with an app called Flash Invaders. It turns graff-hunting into a real-life video game. You take a photograph of his work you’ve found, and the app will award you points. Get enough points, you’re in the high scores! It’s like living inside a 1980s arcade game! Anyway, I’m in the High Scores (naturally! I peaked at #25, but last time I checked, I had dropped to #50 because there are no ‘Vaders in Toronto!) and you get an extra 100-point-bonus for every new city you flash, so I was excited to go hunting in NYC considering he has put up hundreds in the city over the years (previous examples here and here). The last time he visited NYC was in 2013, but since then, people have ruthlessly cut his work off of the buildings and very few remain! Here are the ones I managed to find. I understand that there are some I have missed, so if you’ve found some recently that I’ve missed, let me know in the comments below!

‘Vader has been collaborating A LOT with Cost and Enx as of late (check out my ‘Vader post from Paris, you will all of their collabs there), and this massive piece worth 100 points on the app was in Bushwick in the heart of the Bushwick Collective area.

Space Invader does Snow White! He loves doing this big characters. From my Paris piece, you’ll remember he’s done Picasso, Mona Lisa, Robin Hood, the Pink Panther, Star Wars, and many others. This was in the Lower East Side and I had to stand in the middle of busy Manhattan traffic just to get this shot. Totally worth it.

Also, it was freezing outside, so taking my fingers out of my mitts to wield my camera was really painful and I lost feeling in my hands many times, so I hope you appreciate my dedication here!

Super Mario Brothers! If you remember the video game, Mario would get sucked into those tube-like things, so it’s funny that he placed this mosaic right underneath a tube, hahah…. not so funny that it’s next to a baggie of dog poop. I found this one just north of the Meatpacking district on the West side.

An actual ‘Vader, probably dating back a few years. This was on Bowery, and I kicked myself for missing this one so many times, as I walked up and down Bowery a gazillion times before finding it.

A 3-D ‘Vader! I had intel on this one, but then my intel got damaged and I had to throw it out (specifically, the cat I was looking after pooped on it) and I had written this one off. But then one night I was walking along the High Line (which you really should do in Winter as there’s no one on it in Winter so you have it all to yourself!) and I found it while looking at the view of the city! Totally stumbled upon it by accident, and worth 50 points too!

This one pissed me off because I had the location and intersection for this one and searched and searched for it to no avail. Until one day I decided to go a bit south of the indicated location and found it! My intel had been wrong!!! I hate it when people aren’t specific!! They had told me it was at 17th and 10th. WELL IT WASN’T.

Jeeeez.

Another one I found by accident. This was in South Williamsburg. It’s half-destroyed, but I figured it might still be flashable, as many of the ‘Vaders I found in Paris were half-destroyed but still flashable. I was right!

Oh and this sweet lil’ thang was in the Museum of Moving Images in Queens!

If you’re a Torontonian, it’s almost certain you have, at some point, walked past a wall and seen the lady-faces of Anser spraypainted up on a city wall. I used to think he might live in the Dundas and Ossington area because I had found 10 pieces within one block. But I had never found his work outside of Hogtown. So this past month in NYC, I was delighted to find that he had dusted off his passport and taken the time to tag Williamsburg and Bushwick in Brooklyn!

This was in Bushwick

This kind of East Williamsburg, bordering into Bushwick.

Bushwick

Bushwick

Williamsburg!

Check out my Anser category for more of his work that I’ve photographed.

I’ve spent the past month in New York City; lots was seen, done, experienced and felt. Joyous, ephemeral, exhilarating, but I will get to that in later posts. The only thing I want to talk about right now was my visit to new 9/11 Memorial Museum at the World Trade Centre complex. It’s free on Tuesday evenings if you don’t mind lining up outside in the snow for a while (the line moves quickly). In most sections of the museum, photography isn’t allowed, so I couldn’t capture the artifacts procured on display (pieces of the airplanes, filing cabinets, destroyed firetrucks, twisted metal and steel support beams…) or the personal belongings to many of the victims (almost blemish-free wallets and purses, bifocals, photographs, watches, bracelets and other jewellery)… But I must say that most of the information contained within the museum I had already seen on YouTube. In fact, I think I’ve seen more on YouTube than contained within the museum. However, the transcription of the blackbox flight deck recorder was really interesting, especially the translation from Arabic to English of the terrorists. And the reconstruction of events was really helpful. Each room has a box of tissues in it too, which I thought was a nice touch. It can get rather emotional in there. If you decide to go, prepare yourself for the worst.

All that’s left of the North Tower antennae from the roof

In any case, I went back a second time after my night visit to the museum to check out the names along the two memorial fountains in the complex where the North and South towers once stood. I find it rather appropriate that fountains with a massive drop of water should symbolize the towers and the people as they fell. The names of the almost 3,000 people who died are engraved on the sides of both fountains.

What I wasn’t expecting was how many of the women murdered on 9/11 were pregnant. It’s actually really disturbing.

Vanessa Lang Langer and her unborn child.

Jennifer L Howety and her unborn child.

Lauren Catuzzi Grandcolas and her unborn child

Renne A May and her unborn child

Dianna Lynn Galante and her unborn child

Dianne T. Signer and her unborn child

Sylvia San Pio Resta and her unborn child.

Rahma Salie and her unborn child

Patricia Ann Cimaroli Massari and her unborn child

Helen Crossin Kittle and her unborn child.

See what I mean?

Since it has been over 13 years since this event, we’ve all had plenty of time to familiarize ourselves with some of the names of 9/11. As I was reading the names off the fountain, I actually recognized some of them.

Betty Ong was a flight attendant on Flight 11, the first plane which crashed into the North tower. She was on the phone with American Airlines emergency line when her plane crashed into the tower. You can hear her right up until the plane crashes, then you don’t hear anything, except the AA crew on the other end of the line confirming they’ve lost her. It’s not disturbing per se, it’s more haunting.

Edna Cintron has long haunted me. Her’s is a strange story. When the first plane hit the North Tower, it is believed that everyone on the impact floors were killed instantly. But then in the footage, if we magnify, we can see a woman standing in the gaping plane-shaped hole, waving for quite some time. She has a shock of ginger curly hair, is wearing a black shirt and khaki slacks. Here is footage here and here. At first when I came across this story years ago, I thought it was the work of some of the conspiracy truthers that populate YouTube (and there are many of those nutters).

But when I was at the museum, they showed this photograph and the caption said that the museum had confirmed with her family that that was indeed her, based on what she was wearing that day, her hair, and where she worked in the Tower. She died when the North Tower fell, but somehow survived the initial plane crash. That gaping plane-shaped hole should have been thousands of degrees hot because of the fire, but as I’ve learned, the fire caused by the jet fuel would have actually burned out really quickly, it was the secondary fires engulfing the furniture, drapes, paper, and other items within the towers that kept burning and caused the collapse. It is impossible to tell if she was injured by the initial plane crash, but I would wager that since she waves her arm for over an hour, doesn’t fall off the ledge (thus no head-trauma causing dizziness and no smoke-inhalation causing unconsciousness), and her clothes appear to be unscathed (not burned off from fire, or ripped from debris), she seems to be okay. Such a haunting, strange story.

Now I’ve been to New York lots and lots of times. The first time I was there in 2007, Ground Zero was still a gaping hole, barely cleaned out and still under construction. I’ve walked the streets of lower Manhattan countless times, over and over again. But now that the Freedom Tower is finally completed, and the WTC memorial complex is open to the public, this visit to New York, for me, was somewhat different. There just were no more visible remnants of what happened there. You can walk Lower Manhattan and, yes, while there is still a lot of construction happening in the area, you would never know a massive terrorist attack happened there. You would never know lower Manhattan was blanketed with twisted steel, sulfur, dust, debris, paper, and body parts. It’s so strange to walk Vesey or West Street or Greenwich or Church or West Broadway. These are the places that were completely blanketed. Life goes on, people move on. I just wonder how does anyone look at their scars and not hate the world?

By the time you read this, I will already be out gallivanting through New York City, Brooklyn and Queens, hunting Space Invaders, Banksys, Hanksys, Swoons, and many more of my favourite street artists. I am here for a month, housesitting in the Upper West Side. I end this year the way I began it: on my own terms, and travelling. I have never been more free.

And I win.

Enjoy some of my greatest goofy 2014 hits, in GIF form!
Rolling my eyes at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof, leaving Germany for the last time.

Christine Estima

Christine Estima

As a half-Portuguese, half-Lebanese, feminist, novelist, hipster, atheist, charlatan, blogger, backpacker, playwright, bookworm, film critic, bon vivant and lovertine, I began my journey of petulance and precociousness in the suburbs of Montreal and Toronto. I thusly figured I'd turn out to be a nun, or a writer. A few years at a Catholic school cured me of the first disease.

I cannot wear white without spilling something on it, but you'll still find me, most likely, in the fridge at 4am.

I mean well.

Want to know more about me? You can find my bio, writing portfolio, and media coverage at ChristineEstima.com